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Billy Collins, Jennifer Dean, and Wally Johnson were being driven in a squad car to Ted Carpenter’s apartment. Billy had briefed the other two on Kevin Wilson’s call. “We never looked at the father,” he berated himself. “Carpenter never made a single false move. Never. Outraged at the babysitter falling asleep. Outraged at Moreland for hiring a young babysitter. Then publicly apologizing to Moreland. Then outraged after the pictures in the paper. He was playing us all along.”

Billy’s cell phone rang. It was Alvirah relaying Penny Hammel’s message. Billy turned to Jennifer Dean. “Get the Middletown police to the Owens farmhouse on Linden Road pronto,” he snapped. “Tell them to proceed with caution. We have a tip that Matthew Carpenter may be hidden there.”

Ted Carpenter’s apartment was downtown. “Turn on the siren,” Billy directed the officer who was driving. “That guy has got to be feeling cornered.”

But even as he said it, he had a feeling it would be too late.

When they arrived, the crowd milling around the building told him that what he had feared might have happened. Even before he got out of the squad car, he knew that the body that had just plummeted through the canopy and was lying on the sidewalk was that of Ted Carpenter.